Free eBooks

Understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian Gray expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that his picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied and amoral experiences, while staying young and beautiful; all the while his portrait ages and records every sin.

Three Men in a Boat, narrated by the Englishman J., tells of a boat trip J. takes up with Thames River with his friends George and William Samuel Harris. The novel was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and, with its benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian ‘clerking classes’, it hilariously captured the spirit of its age. Nevertheless, it appears undated to modern readers, the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

Full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th-century pulp fiction. It is also a seminal instance of the planetary romance, a subgenre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western. The story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment.

When Tess D'Urberville is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.

We follow Syme – a poet-turned-detective – as he infiltrates a group known as the Central Anarchist Council and struggles to derail a terrorist plot. The novel is a raucous carnival of genres: thriller, farce, detective story, dystopia, fairy tale and gothic romance. It can be read as a philosophical treatise or a fraught expression of religious conviction but above all it is gloriously entertaining.

"The Black Cat" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most memorable stories. The tale centers around a black cat and the subsequent deterioration of a man. The story is often linked with "The Tell-Tale Heart" because of the profound psychological elements these two works share.

Montresor doesn't like Fortunato on account of the thousands of injuries he has caused and when Fortunato resorts to insult, Montresor vows revenge. "The Cask of Amontillado" has been almost universally referred to as Poe's most perfect short story; in fact, it has often been considered to be one of the world's most perfect short stories.

The Fall of the House of Usher is narrated by a man who has been invited to visit his childhood friend Roderick Usher. Usher gradually makes clear that his twin sister, Madeline, has been placed in the family vault not quite dead. The story is imbued with an atmosphere of foreboding and terror, underpinned by an equally strong exploration of the human psyche.

Bored in her marriage to a country doctor and stifled by life in a small town, the restless Emma Bovary pursues her dreams of passion and excitement, whatever they may cost - Long established as one of the greatest novels, Madame Bovary has been described as a "perfect" work of fiction.

Everything was perfectly swell.
There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.
All diseases were conquered. So was old age.
Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.
The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.
One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.
Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine.
X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his fir...